


Loved One

by shadesfalcon



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Babies, F/M, Natasha Feels, Natasha-centric, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 10:34:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4561257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadesfalcon/pseuds/shadesfalcon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU: Clint and Natasha have a child. As in, right now. Natasha is actively giving birth. Unfortunately, Clint is caught up on a mission, and it looks like Nat will have to face this on her own.</p><p>now with <a href="http://polyamoryavengers.tumblr.com/post/126544113486/natasha-romanoff-and-her-child-drawn-by-my-sister">accompanying art</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	Loved One

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this on [my tumblr](http://polyamoryavengers.tumblr.com/) but then my sister made that art, so I'm putting it here, too, because I'm showing her off :D

She had promised Clint that she’d go to the hospital when it happened, so that’s exactly what she’d done. She hadn’t promised that she’d actually get anyone’s attention. Or check in. Or ask for help.

Although…the contractions were getting more insistent, and she doubted the medical staff would leave her alone if she stripped off the stupid maternity jeans and just squatted down right there on the lobby floor.

With a heavy sigh, she waddled her way over to the nearest front desk. Gods, she hadn’t been in a civilian hospital in years. She wasn’t even sure what the different branches and buildings and desks were all for. But there was no way that she was giving birth in a SHIELD facility. She trusted her current employers more than she had anyone at the Red Room, but that didn’t mean she trusted them with this. She’d had too many scientists ask her to give them “just one small blood sample” for her to be able to let them anywhere near her genetic follow-up.

Honestly, she’d rather be at home. But Clint had stood there in the doorway, increasingly late for his mission briefing, until she’d promised she’d go to an actual hospital. Just in case “something” happened.

And now, of course, Clint was somewhere in Singapore while she was here, swollen belly stretching out her red sweater and maternity pants. As much of an annoyance as labor would be, getting the thing out of her was going to be a blessing. She’d spent too long unbalanced and vulnerable to attack.

“Can I help you?”

Natasha was broken out of her musings by the question from a woman sitting at the closest desk.

“I hope so,” Natasha smiled, falling back into a generic cover ID face. “I should probably see a doctor.”

“All right,” the woman smiled back, and she typed something into the computer in front of her. “Why don’t you take one of those forms, fill it out, and then bring it back up here?”

Natasha picked one of the stacked clipboards off the edge of the desk. They all had a single yellow piece of paper shoved in them, and a pen attached by a chain.

As she made her way back across the room to the nearest chair, she wondered who put those papers on the clipboards. Probably volunteers. Young things desperate for community service hours that would put them ahead in the race to fill out graduate school applications.

She hid a wince as another contraction hit her, and settled into the chair. At least the protruding baby bump gave her a convenient table to balance the clipboard on.

She filled out the page, grimly clutching the pen and making sure to breath in through her nose and out through her mouth. In a few hours, the whole thing would be over and—

She bit the thought off and redirected her efforts to filling out the paper.

She wished Clint were—

She bit that thought off, as well.

The section labeled “reason for your visit” made her laugh through her nose a little. At least this one wouldn’t require her cover ID, which she’d been painstakingly putting together for that past six months. “Painstakingly” because there was no way any offspring of hers was going to be tied back to her in any provable official capacity. None of her many enemies would ever be able to find the existence of this birth in any official paperwork. The thing would be as separate from her as she could make it.

Finally, she managed to finish the form and waddle her way back to the front desk. She handed over the clipboard to the receptionist, who took it deftly.

“Thank you,” she told Natasha, switching her focus from her computer to the form, without looking up. “Someone will be with you in a moment.”

Natasha only made it a few steps away before the woman spoke again.

“Uh, ma’am?”

Natasha waited a moment before she turned around yet again, because she was in the middle of another contraction and couldn’t decide whether she’d rather scream or just go ahead and kill the lady.

She did neither, scrounging up a plastic smile from somewhere in her memory.

“Yes? What it is?”

“You put here under ‘reason for visit’ that your contractions have gotten down to eight minutes apart?”

“That’s correct.”

The lady blinked once and then repeated, “They’re eight minutes apart from each other? So you’re in labor. Are you in active labor?”

Natasha smiled sweetly. “Are you asking me to stick my fingers down and see whether or not I’m dilated to seven centimeters?”

To the woman's credit, the crudity didn't seem to faze her, and she plowed ahead with, “Ma’am, this is the ER. We’re not equipped for a birth. I’ll call you a wheelchair immediately, and we’ll get you up to L&D. Trust me, it’ll be faster than checking in here and waiting for a transfer.”

“Where’s L&D?”

“Fourth floor, and I—”

“I’ll just walk over there. It’s fine.”

“Ma’am, I really must insist. You’ve technically checked in—” she waved the yellow paper “—and you’re our responsibility now.”

Natasha leaned heavily against the counter and deftly snatched the page out of the woman’s hand. At least her dexterity was still functional.

“There. Now I didn’t check in, and I’m my own problem.”

The woman looked like she’d prefer to raise an objection, but she didn’t say anything else. Natasha took that as a “go ahead” to begin her long journey down the hallways. She started by trying to find an elevator, which turned out to be a issue all on its own. There were apparently several elevators in the building complex. She should have looked at some blueprints before she came. She’d had plenty of time between when her water broke and when the contractions got important enough for her to drive over.

But no. She’d just stared up at the ceiling fan and fantasized about what it would be like to drink vodka again.

By the time she’d found the right elevators, and realized that L&D was actually referred to as “Labor and Delivery” on all the signs, she’d manage to calm herself down. Not because the situation was in any way calming, but because she’d stressed her body and mind out enough that she’d fallen into full-blown mission mode.

Which was fine. It’d probably be easier to give birth with that attitude.

This time, when she checked in at the front desk, she did it with a perfect smile and with her cover ID’s name on her lips.

“Well, you seem pretty together, Emily,” the nurse gushed. “We’ll get you back as soon as possible. For now, if you can just take a seat in one of those chairs, and listen for your name.”

Natasha let her real self fade into the background, giving over control to her cover, Emily Jones.

“Absolutely,” Emily smiled.

Natasha’s lips. Natasha’s body. Emily’s smile. Emily’s birth. Emily's problem.

***

The calm redhead out in the lobby was already a topic of discussion.

It wasn’t completely unheard of for someone to come in alone. Life was weird and sometimes people gave birth without anyone they knew to help them through the experience. But this girl? The calm young girl with fire in her hair and in her eyes wasn’t any of the typical stories. She was clean and put together. She was calm and young and looked like the kind of person who would have a dozen friends by her side, even if the father of the child was no longer in the picture.

And yet, there she sat. First in the waiting room and then in her hospital room. 

Alone.

Moreover, Miss Emily Jones had claimed on her paperwork that her contractions were now five minutes apart. However, she was sitting too calmly for that. In fact, Carrie had sat with phone in hand and timed out more than ten minutes, and the girl hadn’t moved once. She’d sat there calmly. No wincing, no cursing, no crying.

It wasn’t until Laci pulled the woman back and got down to take a look that anyone believe the claim at all.

"Shit,” Laci murmured.

Alexis startled and glanced up to see if Emily had been offended by the curse. Fortunately, the girl seemed more concerned with how many ceiling tiles the room had, and didn’t seem to have heard.

“What?” Alexis murmured, more quietly.

“Her cervix is nine centimeters,” Laci answered.

“Shit,” Alexis echoed.

***

By the end of it all, Natasha had decided she did not like labor. She’d made that decision before she began crowning, and nothing that followed did anything to change that. While she had experienced worse pain in her life, she had never experienced that kind of pain.

She had once spent four days being electrocuted somewhere in the Ukraine, and, at the peak of labor, she was pretty sure she’d trade out that experience for her current one.

Nevertheless, she didn’t scream. She screwed up her eyes and doubled her body up and flexed her fingers. Tears leaked from her eyes from the sheer stress of it all. But her lips remained tightly closed. The skin around them grew white from where she bit them between her teeth, and the nurses were afraid she’d draw blood.

One well-intentioned nurse had advised that she just give in and cry out.

Natasha had rolled her eyes, widened her legs, and pushed again.

In the end, nature was inevitable. Natasha had always taken good care of her body, so the whole experience was over in a few hours. She collapsed back against the wet bedding. There was sweat and blood and who-knew-what all over her, and she’d probably never feel clean again.

There was screaming in the background, and her eyes finally focused on the small infant being washed by the hospital staff.

Then her view was cut off by the ring of congratulating nurses.

“It’s a beautiful boy. Do you have the name ready for him?”

“Call it Ivan, for all I fucking care,” Natasha murmured, too quietly for anyone to make out. She turned over on her side, away from the child, and shut her eyes tight.

***

Late that night, she felt herself being gently shaken awake in the dark. Her instinct was to lash out, but Clint’s smell identified him in the dark.

“What are you doing here?” she hissed, glancing toward the low-lighting hallway. “You were in Singapore.”

“And I abandoned that as soon as I heard,” Clint answered. “Why didn’t you call me? I had to hear it from Coulson, who picked you up off a facial recognition program he had Skye install in the hospital video surveillance. Apparently he knew you better than I did.”

Natasha shifted uncomfortably under the weight of his disappointment. Of his pain.

“What were you thinking, Tasha?” he continued. “Were you afraid I wouldn’t come running? That you’d ask, and I’d refuse?”

“I was afraid that you _would_ come running, and I was apparently justified. It’s not like this is something you needed to be here for.”

“Well you didn’t give me much choice there, did you? And of course I came running. This is a one-in-a-lifetime experience. They can deal without me on the rest of the mission.”

“I wouldn’t have come,” Natasha informed him bluntly.

“Well, I think it would have been a little harder for you to miss the event. Seeing as you were a key player and all.”

“You know what I meant!”

“Yeah, Tasha. I know what you meant. And I know it’s true. You would have put the mission first, for something like this. And that’s ok, because I know that won’t always be true. When it really does matter, you’re going to be there. And hell will reign down on anyone who tries to hurt that baby.”

Baby.

It was the first time she’d let herself think the word.

“Have you held him, yet?” Clint asked gently.

“I haven’t held it.”

“Him,” he corrected, firmly. No anger. No compromise.

“Him,” she echoed.

She let Clint draw her out of the bed, bare feet quiet on the cold floor. He took her hand and pulled her behind him across the room, and over to the little bassinet. She’d tried to insist the infant be taken away to some nursery, but apparently the hospital didn’t “do that anymore.”

God, she felt so empty. Light and empty and drained.

“I don’t want to look,” she said. Her breathing was shallow and she felt lightheaded. “If I look at him I’ll…”

Clint waited patiently for her to finish the sentence.

“…I’ll want to keep him.”

“Don’t see the problem there, Natasha. I’m pretty much already set on that.”

He wasn’t giving up and, inevitably, she was forced to look down at the thing.

The perfect little thing. Her perfect little thing. Perfect little boy all wrapped up in soft fleece with a white cap. Tiny fingers and even tinnier fingernails. How could fingernails that small even exist? What was the point of them?

“Fuck you,” she whispered to Clint, blinking back tears. “Fuck you. I told you I’d want to keep him.”

“Pick him up,” Clint told her.

She complied. She folded her arms under and around him and held him close.

“You think of a name, yet?” Clint asked her. “I know we’d been putting it off, but it’s kind of now or never.”

“How about Icarus?” she laughed bitterly.

“We’re not out of our depth, Natasha.”

“We’re not out of our depth? How can you say something that stupid? Do you know how many times I’ve been shot? I don’t even know! I’ve been shot so many times that I have lost count. I can’t protect my own body! Why do you think I could protect his? What do you think happens to this tiny perfect body if a bullet goes through it? There will be flesh and blood and bone, and he will be dead.”

“It’s not like he’s going to be out on missions.”

“People have come looking for us in our home before.”

“You forget. He’s ours. He is made of you and me. And maybe the ‘me’ part doesn’t count for much, but the ‘you’ part certainly does. This baby will be strong. He will be raised by you and me and Banner and the Captain and probably Tony—God help him—and Thor already sent a message inquiring after yours and the baby’s health. This baby will have people from space protecting him. Are you listening to me, Natasha? Space. He will grow strong and smart, and you’ll look back on this day and laugh that you ever thought he was vulnerable.”

“Yakov,” she murmured.

“Yakov? For the name?”

“It means ‘may God protect’.”

Clint wrapped one arm around her, looking down at the child.

“May God protect,” he agreed.

They stood there for a while, side by side in the dark, and then Clint nudged Natasha.

“Ok, Momma. Grab little Yakov here and we’ll give these nurses something to talk about. I already snagged his birth certificate and other stuff, so it’s time to disappear into the night. The baby that never was. Coulson’s wiping the video surveillance as we speak.”

“Ok. I’m ready.”

“Great. Now hand him to me and—”

“No!” she snapped, clutching him closer. “He’s mine right now. You can have a turn later.”

“Bossy!” Clint grinned. “Ok, fine. You can hold him for the escape, but on one condition.”

“What?”

“We get to give him an English middle name. So that the poor thing can at least try to be normal sometimes.”

Natasha narrowed her eyes and swore at him in Russian, but it wasn’t very threatening. Not with the way she was clutching the sleeping infant to her chest.


End file.
